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> Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about doing a bit of critical thinking on this Totally unnecessary. That gratuitous dig doesn't advan

> Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about doing a bit of critical thinking on this Totally unnecessary. That gratuitous dig doesn't advance your argument at all. > What about all the resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc? That doesn't seem like it's u/paxys issue to address. The person they responded to made a _very_ strong claim: "The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs into more than one basket". It seems entirely consistent with both the original argument and the reply that humans could have two very important jobs to address (climate change, and becoming multi-planetary) and still have resources to dedicate to all those other things you describe. > Do you make the same tired comments when those industries are brought up? I would make a similar argument that u/paxys made if the amusement park industry claimed that building amusement parks was the single most important job that humanity had. Similarly, for sports, video games movies, or most other industries. Claiming the mantle of "the most important job humanity has" is a very big claim. > And that's not even getting into the fact that multiple things can be done by humanity at once. u/paxys didn't say that we could only address one thing at a time. They were disagreeing with the claim that becoming multiplanetary is the single most important job humanity has. Disagreeing with which singular job we have is the "most important" one makes absolutely no claim as to how we should be dividing our time. Ultimately, I actually agree with the original poster that becoming multiplanetary and multistellar is an important feat we should be aggressively perusing. But I also think surviving any extinction-event filters that may come along the way is equally important.

colordrops 5y ago
> Totally unnecessary Good point, I should have restrained myself here. The rest of your comments would be fair, except that u/paxys said the following: > There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. Which clearly indicates that we should not be working on space travel until AFTER we've solved humanity's problems.
- ncallaway 5y ago
  > There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. I didn't read it as indicating that we should fully postpone humanity's problems. For example, the next few sentences read: > The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generations and centuries. That indicates to me that the delay the person is considering is on the order of the delay imposed by FCC regulations (i.e. months or years), not "start working on it after we've solved humanity's problems". But that's just how it reads to me
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Those comments were added after I responded. In fact it's still being edited. This was the entirety of the comment I responded to: > The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that.
- s5300 5y ago
  The nation with the largest amount of military force and nuclear weapons, as well as control of the globally used & prized currency ($ USD), and even the universal language of the skies (well, maybe you could say it's England's language, but the central power of the U.S. is the reason it's the language of the skies), has around 1/3rd of it's nation that actively would like to see at least an other 1/3 of it's nation die, and said other 1/3 really only wants to get things like nationwide enforcement of basic human rights (like in all other, I think, 32 of 33 highly developed nations do), and to actually embody the meaning of "welfare state" that the U.S. has been defined as for... idk how long tbh, but for quite some time - Along with a want for the aforementioned 1/3rd not wanting to literally kill them. And they're simply unable to come to any understanding, after decades of botched discourse. I don't see how some group of people focusing on space travel as a way to potentially divert the end of humanity as something that bad

colordrops 5y ago

> Totally unnecessary Good point, I should have restrained myself here. The rest of your comments would be fair, except that u/paxys said the following: > There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. Which clearly indicates that we should not be working on space travel until AFTER we've solved humanity's problems.

ncallaway 5y ago
> There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. I didn't read it as indicating that we should fully postpone humanity's problems. For example, the next few sentences read: > The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generations and centuries. That indicates to me that the delay the person is considering is on the order of the delay imposed by FCC regulations (i.e. months or years), not "start working on it after we've solved humanity's problems". But that's just how it reads to me
- colordrops 5y ago
  Those comments were added after I responded. In fact it's still being edited. This was the entirety of the comment I responded to: > The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that.
s5300 5y ago
The nation with the largest amount of military force and nuclear weapons, as well as control of the globally used & prized currency ($ USD), and even the universal language of the skies (well, maybe you could say it's England's language, but the central power of the U.S. is the reason it's the language of the skies), has around 1/3rd of it's nation that actively would like to see at least an other 1/3 of it's nation die, and said other 1/3 really only wants to get things like nationwide enforcement of basic human rights (like in all other, I think, 32 of 33 highly developed nations do), and to actually embody the meaning of "welfare state" that the U.S. has been defined as for... idk how long tbh, but for quite some time - Along with a want for the aforementioned 1/3rd not wanting to literally kill them. And they're simply unable to come to any understanding, after decades of botched discourse. I don't see how some group of people focusing on space travel as a way to potentially divert the end of humanity as something that bad